Nicholas Kristof

- Panelist Blurb

Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for his writing on Darfur, which got the world's attention focused on this heartrending situation. He writes op-ed columns that appear each Wednesday and Saturday. Previously, he was associate managing editor of The Times.

Born on April 27, 1959, Kristof grew up on a cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon, and raised sheep for his Future Farmers of America project. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in three years in 1981, and then won first class honors in his study of law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. After working in France, he caught the travel bug and began backpacking around Africa and Asia, writing articles to cover his expenses. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to well over 100 countries. He has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, mobs, war and an African airplane crash.

Kristof joined The New York Times in October 1984, initially covering economics. After that, he served as a business correspondent based in Los Angeles, and was Bureau Chief in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. In 2000, he covered the presidential campaign and in particular Governor Bush, and he is the author of the chapter on Mr. Bush in the reference book "The Presidents."

In 1990 Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Kristof has won other prizes including the George Polk Award and the Overseas Press Club awards.

Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are authors of "China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power" and "Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia." Kristof and WuDunn are the busy parents of three children. Kristof enjoys running, backpacking in the Oregon Cascades, and having his Chinese and Japanese corrected by his children.

NOTE: Bio is as it appeared in the Forum program from February 8, 2007.